Houseboat Days in China

By J.O.P. Bland and Andrew Chubb

British journalist J.O.P. Bland, described as "the best-informed Westerner on China in the world", promises a "record of idleness", of leisurely cruises through the backwaters of the Chinese countryside. But he brings us much more. Through his account of wanderings in the time-trapped heartland of China and his personal encounters with the local

• Language: English
• Publisher: Earnshaw Books Ltd
• Release date: Apr 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9789888107834

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CHAPTER II

The skilled Milesian man who, with half-open mouth and dreamy eyes, Stood steering Argo to that land of lies.

JASON.

KNOW a man who has conceived and executed the brilliant idea of putting his houseboat crew into uniform—a rainbow thing of scarlet and blue, with heraldic devices in green across breast and back. His reasons for this are, first, to distinguish his retainers from the aborigines; secondly, to impress the cities of the plain with the importance of the strangers in their midst; and, thirdly, to conceal from himself that exceeding squalor which marks the houseboat coolie for its own. Arraying these poor waifs in garments suggestive of a pantomime chorus, he is able to contemplate them, he says, without continual heart-searchings on the subject of Destiny and its rugged inequalities. Vastly creditable, I think, both this spiritual distress and the manner of its alleviation.

For the crew of a European’s houseboat consists generally of the pariahs of our floating population. That it should be so is unnecessary; the fact, like many others of the kind, is due to our distaste for studying the native and his ways—or, to put the matter plainly, to our ignorant laziness. Good and notable exceptions there are—boats that use and keep workmen; on long trips, even your easy-going man may inspect his wastrels before starting, but of the ordinary week-end trip it is safe to say that half the average crew should be in hospital and the other half in gaol. And this is partly because the lowdah has come to expect that you will travel by steam, and partly because long impunity in fooling and fleecing the foreign devil has made him greatly daring. Which brings us to consideration of the lowdah.

In the ancient vernacular his name means old and great—no doubt, like another word with us, it was originally a term of endearment among sailors, an archaic equivalent of ‘old cock,’ and its actual meaning is helmsman or shipmaster. On a houseboat he is the only permanent official; in theory, a faithful watcher who keeps the Saucy Jane spick and span; guards her inner parts from river thieves, rats and vermin, and her hull from dry rot and the poles of passing junks; sees to her safe mooring, and engages the crew when wanted. In practice he is one of a close corporation of rogues and scoundrels, who for five days in the week riots and gambles (probably in the cabin of the Saucy Jane) with his fellow ruffians on what he has ‘squeezed’ from your last trip. The native mafoo¹ is something of a villain, but compared to the houseboat lowdah he is a guileless person of good morals.

And when you come to think of it, the thing is natural enough, for here, as in all the Seven Seas, the leisured classes are prone to evil, and the innate virtue of a Chinaman is not proof against luxurious idleness; and the lowdah is idle, exempt even from the master’s eye, for 300 days of the year. In such case he must perforce fall from grace; but the mystery of the thing is that, having fallen and being the reprobate he is, he should retain his pride of place and continue to swell it on the after-deck of any decent boat. No doubt the secret—like that of all native villainy—lies in organisation; these fellows keep the ring against outsiders, and to get a new lowdah, under these conditions, is simply to draw another card from a very filthy pack. Dismiss your man to-morrow: what happens? Brown will take him, because Brown’s has left him suddenly—and you get Brown’s. There is one truculent ruffian of my acquaintance who has been lowdah on nearly every boat on the river; he never keeps a place more than a month after the shooting season begins, and is generally thrown overboard up country; but he finds, like Tristram Shandy, that in the propagation of geese Nature is all-bountiful, and I see no reason why he should not continue successfully in his profession unto the end. A remedy for this state of affairs may possibly lie in engaging young and artless lowdahs from another district under police protection; but the experiment requires more energy and leisure than most of us can afford.

Seven coolies go to make the ordinary boat’s crew which the lowdah professes to engage. You pay each man forty cents a day (say 8d.). Off this wage the lowdah ‘squeezes’ three or four cents as the price of his favour; next he makes profitable terms for running the ship’s mess, and levies a claim on cumshaws. Eventually he engages a couple of able-bodied men in case of accidents, ships his wife’s cousin (suffering from incipient beriberi) and his own nephew (ætat. 13), the remainder of the crew being usually opium-smoking ricksha men whose vehicles have been impounded by the police. Is it any wonder that, if you insist on travelling twenty miles under yuloh,¹ the elements, mysteriously working, and the stars in the courses combine to forbid it; that time, tide, head winds, the size of your boat, and the state of the creeks prevent any such undertaking?

Knowledge, as sages have frequently observed, is power. In no country upon earth is this axiom made manifest as in China, where the ‘knowing’ man lives in fatness, preying upon those whom Imperial Edicts describe as the stupid ones. The lowdah’s place in creation and his survival therein aptly illustrate this simple truth. He knows, therefore he thrives. He knows the European’s limitations and the necessities of his fellow-natives, and from both he derives profit sufficient to make him a personage in the tea-house. There is, moreover, as with friend Reineke, a certain artistic merit in the rogue’s methods which compels our sneaking admiration; he has brought his villainies to such a pitch of studied perfection, based his systems on such foundations of laborious knowledge, that at times you are inclined to let him enjoy the fruits of his ingenuity. It is the same feeling that prompts you, when the peregrine swoops deftly on your wounded quail, to let him get away with his quarry.

In the gentle art of presenting bills the lowdah is a past master; give him his head, and the upkeep of your boat will equal that of a suburban villa. There are, of course, the usual and recognised squeezes of his profession; the annual overhauls—on which he lives riotously for months—the incidentals of each trip, coal, oil, candles, soap, and the unnumbered mops and poles whose mysterious life is but a little day. Every lowdah knows to a nicety, by experience and by that delicately-gauged repute in which each European stands in native opinion, the breaking-point of your endurance; also he knows that you will pay something, however monstrous the claim, for peace’ sake and to be rid of importunity. And so the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb and many a bleating victim of my acquaintance not only submits to the shearing, but becomes curiously attached to the shearer. This, too, is not unnatural, for your typical ‘savez’ lowdah, the man who knows and does his business up country, often displays, rogue though he be, a very wholesome and engaging interest in your sport; take him away from his accustomed purlieus and the sons of Belial his friends, and you find him decent enough, serviceable and keen in the matter of your bag. These pleasing traits in his character are, however, reserved exclusively for his so-called master; the world sees them not. Let a stranger borrow the boat, and with it he borrows a very pestilent rogue.

A personage in the tea-house.

An intelligent¹ observer of Chinese life—unduly neglected by the present generation—pointed out years ago this side of the lowdah’s character in an entertaining passage which I may fitly quote:—

It is to the outsider, the casual tripper, that our friend reveals the choicest beauties of his nature. Which of us has not sat down over the cabin-stove and cursed the unwritten law which forbids the chastisement of another man’s menial? The lowdah, still sleepy from yesterday’s debauch, revels in this impunity, which preserves him from the argumentum ad hominem; right well he knows too, that, storm as you may, it is unusual to look the borrowed horse in the mouth, and that on Monday you will pay without demur, for the lender’s sake.

You start gaily enough, wondering only how the wretched crew of decrepid men and small boys is going to yuloh the boat to your happy hunting-grounds; but a friendly launch takes you as far as Sungkong, and with this aid it should be easy for them to get you to Kazay before the morning. Therefore, having seen them start work at ten o’clock, you turn in after describing with much detail the spot where you wish to shoot. My savee, says the lowdah, and you go to bed. At 3 A.M. you awake to find the boat snugly anchored under a mud-bank. Then the fun begins—at least, it is fun for the lowdah. When you have roused him from his lair (it takes time, and you are half-frozen), he says, Head wind, head tide, no can yuloh. There is no wind, and no tide to speak of, but that is a mere detail. When you ask where you are, he says, Velly near Kazay, by which statement the memory of Ananias is put to shame. Then, with the threats and promises, you persuade him to go on, and for half an hour—until you are asleep again—two small boys propel the boat at the rate of one ‘li’ an hour. Eventually, the next morning you find yourself moored in the salubrious vicinity of Fungking, a spot endeared to the lowdah by the presence of a lady friend, but otherwise only remarkable for a total absence of game; there, while you tramp the highly cultivated mud-fields, he spends a happy day in congenial society. At dusk he returns, explaining that certain supplies of coal and oil were required for the return trip, and these defects he has provided, the bill being presented in proof of good faith. Then you start homewards; and should your latent wrath be inclined to manifest itself in unpleasantness, you will, if you are wise, refrain therefrom, for our friend is quite capable of running the boat violently into a convenient bridge while you are at dinner; he knows you will have to make good the damage, and there are pickings in such accidents for